Are we Americans in the midst of a Second Civil War, or did the first war never conclude?

It seems I have lived my entire life in the midst of the battles of the War Between the States. In 1950, on the playground of my grammar school in Baltimore we had to choose sides. “Are you a Reb, or a (spit, groan) Yankee?” I now live in Northern Virginia where one cannot drive ten miles without passing through a once bloody battlefield. “Are you a Reb or a Yankee” has become “Are you a right-wing conservative Nazi, or a loving, compassionate (spit, groan) Commie Lib?”

Last Friday the state of Arizona passed a law requiring local police to report undocumented workers (illegal aliens) to the Federal government. Although much of the Arizona law was crafted word for word from Federal law governing immigration, it is being condemned by other states as unconstitutional and racist. The people of Arizona support the law saying it is needed to curb crime in the border state, which is a key corridor for the smuggling of illegal drugs and humans from Mexico.

Minnesota is one state in opposition to Arizona’s act and is contemplating shunning the desert state. The mayor of the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota has already banned publicly funded travel to Arizona. The state law set a “dangerous example to the rest of the country by creating a culture that made racial profiling acceptable,” he said. A number of cities in the bankrupt state of California are threatening boycotts against Arizona for vowing to enforce the law. California’s San Francisco has practically cut off diplomatic relations with Arizona, as Mayor Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on all official city travel to anywhere in Arizona. Los Angeles is planning a boycott.

While other states are planning severe punishment for Arizona, Georgia and Texas and other State Legislatures across America are planning to propose similar state immigration enforcement laws. A Texas lawmaker plans to introduce a tough immigration measure similar to the new law in Arizona. Rep. Debbie Riddle of Tomball said she will push for the law in the January legislative session, according to Wednesday’s editions of the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle. “The first priority for any elected official is to make sure that the safety and security of Texans is well-established. If our federal government did their job, then Arizona wouldn’t have to take this action, and neither would Texas” said Rep. Riddle. Republican Alabama gubernatorial candidate Tim James has vowed that if elected, he will require English to be the only language of Alabama’s driver’s license exam. “This is Alabama; we speak English. If you want to live here, learn it” he says.

Then there are the looming shadows of the secretive militias all across the land who do believe that federal border laws should be enforced: The Militias.

According to the famous poem on the Statue of Liberty, America once opened her doors.

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Now the cry is “MAY DAY, MAY DAY.” as Latinos plan massive May Day rallies in more than Seventy American cities. “The marches and demonstrations are going to be far more massive than they otherwise would have been,” said Los Angeles rally organizer Juan Jose Gutierrez. Meanwhile, the federal government of the United States, formerly known as “The Union” is coming down against Arizona and other states following Arizona’s hubris in lawmaking. Is Arizona the second South Carolina? Time will tell.

“Drink lots of tea, eat lots of goat, and get to know the people. That’s why we’re here.“

All during his campaign, Barack Obama, promised to let Iraq go, and to fight in Afghanistan where we could engage the Taliban. Implementing that promise, the Obama administration has ordered 21,000 “additional” troops to Afghanistan, which will bring the total number of American forces to 68,000 by year end.

On Thursday of this week President Obama sent 4,000 Marines into the volatile province of Helmand, not to fight, but to nation-build. This follows the Colin Powell strategy of war: “if you break it you own it.” Yesterday, on Independence Day, two of those young warriors turned nation-builders were killed. Aaron Fairbairn was one of them.

America’s Commander in Chief personally placed those Marines in southern Afghanistan under the command of Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson’s who, according to Diana West, ordered them to “drink lots of tea, eat lots of goat, and get to know the people. That’s why we’re here.” It’s called nation-building; it is the Colin Powell Strategy of War.

Barack Obama and the American Left want to fight only “Good Wars” and they see the building of Afghanistan into a nation as a way to use America’s military for “good” instead of for defense. Barack Obama and the United States government is staking the lives and limbs of these 68,000 young American warriors and billions of taxpayer dollars on their hope to do good. Unfortunately, there is no indication that the Afghan people will cooperate with Obama’s dream.

Colin Powell’s made-up rule for war, that — if you break it you own it — has already been debunked (both Presidents Bush followed it), so why is Barack Obama giving it another go? We need a new American strategy; possibly: “If you break it, you decide whether or not you want to own it.” What kind of arrogance is it for the West to go into an Islamic land to organize its tribes into one nation? Let them do their own nation-building, not us.

Pirates have commandeered an American-flagged (NOT Liberian) container ship off the coast of Somalia. This story is true (you are NOT reading “The Onion”) as it has been reported by Al Jazeera News. The 21st century swash-bucklers have kidnapped the ship’s captain, an American, and are holding him hostage, just in case the U.S. Navy contemplates any of those Cowboy tactics left over from the George W. Bush reign.

President Barack Obama has once again referred to this latest national disaster as one that he inherited. However, Obama did not blame the pirates’ uprising on his usual scapegoat, George W. Bush. Obama explained to fawning American news outlets that these Swashbucklers of the High Seas were inherited directly from former President Thomas Jefferson, who obviously failed to quell the piracy problem during his own War on Terror: “Jefferson’s War.”

For more than 200 years, that dead white President, Thomas Jefferson, has been given credit for successfully swashbuckling the Barbary Pirates, giving birth to the United States Navy for that mission, and creating a pep song for the US Marines about “the Shores of Tripoli,” President Obama revealed. He continued: “those dead white historians got it all wrong! The swashbuckling evil buccaneers continue to cruise high on the high seas, and Thomas Jefferson’s failure has been dropped at my doorstep on Pennsylvania Avenue more than 200 years later.” The adoring White House Press Corps swooned.

The United States Marines performed with honor at the first war proclaimed by our new nation. In 1801, when Thomas Jefferson became president, he refused to accede to the Barbary pirates of Tripoli’s demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. This refusal brought about the first ‘war’ the U.S. would fight as a country. The first line of the Marine hymn, ‘from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli’, references the 600-mile march across the Libyan Desert of a group of Navy men and others to capture the port city of Derna, Tripoli. It took a concerted effort by England, France, Spain, and the United States to end over 400 years of Muslim piracy on the Barbary Coast.” (“Happy Birthday Marines” by Edna Barney)

Obama continued his explanation. “Thomas Jefferson had his chance to contain piracy when this nation was young, and he failed miserably, as seen by these man-made disasters now terrorizing shipping lanes on the high seas. Jefferson even instigated a war with those North African Islamic potentates whose modern lands are known today as Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, which is more proof for America and the world, that gains won by force do not endure. It was up to America’s Founding Fathers to secure free navigation of the seas for the new United States of America, and their posterity, which is ME, and they punted” complained Obama. “This is one more ‘inherited’ problem that the country is now depending on me to solve, which I will as soon as I can escape the glow of the glory of my European tour.”

“I’ve had my historians researching ancient history to find the root problem of today’s Somalian piracy. They discovered that these “man-made disasters” we are experiencing today all stem directly from a meeting in London in March of 1785, between American founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and Ambassador Abd Al-Rahman of Tripoli. The Founding Fathers inquired of the ‘Mussulman’ Ambassador for the reason that the Barbary states were impeding American ships, pirating their cargo and enslaving their crews and passengers. Ambassador Abd Al-Rahman gave the answer to America’s illustrious Founders, but they were absolutely tone-deaf to the ‘Mussulman’s’ words:”

“It was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” ~Ambassador Abd Al-Rahman of Tripoli to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, London, 1785.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has expressed concern and called upon the world to “come together to end the scourge of piracy.” (Good Luck on that one, Hillary.) President Barack Obama reassured Americans that with his new leadership skills the country will be able to resolve this historic first time boarding by pirates of an American ship. He has already promised that, unlike his predecessor Thomas Jefferson, America under Barack Obama will never wage war on any Muslim nation. We are a nation of laws, and if our lawyers find that these man-made pirates have broken any international laws, we will prosecute them to the fullest extent in whatever world court they find agreeable to their cultural mores. In addition, Barack Obama has dispatched a special communique to the Somalian Pirate King reminding him that America’s president is now a “brother.” All those dead white American presidents and founding fathers, are just that – dead white men!

“If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on,” — Government official to Wall Street Journal.

New evidence has just been uncovered that cyberspies, likely from China and Russia, have penetrated the U.S. power grid and left behind spyware software that can be activated to disrupt America’s water, sewer and electricity infrastructure, FOX News confirmed today.

The “intrusions,” first reported by The Wall Street Journal, did not occur yesterday, but happened over the period of time when George W. Bush was in charge, a high-ranking U.S. official said. The breaches are “something that the Bush Administration failed to catch,” the official reminded FOX News. Barack Obama himself was asked by the American media if Americans should be concerned that the spyware that Mr. Obama inherited from George W. Bush could be activated during Obama’s reign to disrupt critical systems and make his administration appear inept.

“White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a written statement that President Obama takes the issue of cyber security ‘very seriously,’ but that the administration is not aware of any such ‘disruptions’ to the power grid. Cyber attacks are made all the time, however, industry continuously looks for and mitigates against such attacks and we are not aware of any disruptions to the power grid caused by deliberate cyber activity here in the United States.“

While the motivation for the breaches is not well understood, the electronic trail appears to lead to China and Russia. However, both of those nations deny involvement in state-sponsored cyperspying. Officials at both Washington embassies of China and Russia emphatically deny that any of their spies in the United States are certified as cyperspies.

The good news, according to The Wall Street Journal, is that the cyperspying espionage appeared pervasive across the country and did not target any particular ethnic group nor sexual persuasion. Indeed, government officials explained to the Journal, the cyberspying intrusions were detected by those same U.S. intelligence agencies, CIA, DIA, NSA, etcetera, that had been asleep at the wheel during the Bush administration, when “man-made disaster” pilots were flying American-made airplanes into American-made buildings.

“‘If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on,’ one official told the Journal.” That is why the Obama Administration has already sent a message to both China and Russia, promising that the Obama Nation will NEVER wage war against either of their nations. China, Russia, the rest of the world, and the American people need to be reassured that President Barack Obama will never be a President George W. Bush.

Satire is probably closer to the truth than any real news you can read in America.

Stack up briefcases filled with $100 bills to equal Obama’s assorted bank bailouts, stimulus packages and proposed $3.6 trillion budget, and the briefcases would reach so high into the atmosphere that they would constitute a hazard to satellites.

Less than three years ago American Liberals were in high dungeon because President George Bush had spent “BILLIONS” with a “B” dollars fighting a war against terror. One website even went so far as to graphically illustrate just how many miles high President Bush’s $315 Billion dollars stacked up. A billion here, a billion there… Pretty soon it starts to add up to some real money. Those billions of dollars went to pay soldiers’ salaries, to pay American workers for building war munitions, airplanes and tanks, to pay American farmers for food, etcetera.

Fast forward less than three years and we are into the TRILLIONS of Dollars stratosphere as our government is throwing money anywhere it can in the name of Financial Bailout and Stimulus. Our brand new President, Obama has proposed budget deficits of $1.75 trillion for 2009, and an additional $1.17 trillion for 2010. All the government has to do is collect a cool $3 trillion from American taxpayers to clear that off the books. So what’s a few Billion here and a few Billion there in the whole scheme of things? After all, American taxpayers always come through.

Today, no one seems concerned about how much a Trillion Dollars really is. Routinely, our government leaders mistakenly interchange the words million, billion and trillion when referring to taxpayer money that they plan to spend or have spent. That is because no one can really understand how much money is a $Billion, much less a $Trillion! As an example, just last week the U. S. Congress went totally bananas over AIG executives getting a mere $165 MILLION in bonuses. How much out of $3 Trillion is $165 Million? It’s really a pittance comparatively, but apparently that math is too much for the average American.

Last week, amid the AIG bonus distraction so that no one would notice, the Federal government announced that it is printing $1 Trillion in new money to flood our troubled economy. $1 Trillion! And barely a wimper from “We the People.” Clifford Barney of Red Door Software wrote the following entitled “Money in the Sky – the Story of Jack and the Greenstalk.”

Inspired by the visuals of enormous amounts of money at $87 Billion, I calculated the following: A 1-inch thick stack of 100 dollar bills (the highest denomination in circulation) is worth about $25,000. To mentally grasp the staggering value of the $1 trillion that the Fed recently announced plans to inject into the economy, the stack of 100 dollar bills would need to be – get this – 40 million inches high. Let’s see, divide by 12, divide again by 5280 and um…that’s a stack of 100 dollar bills more than 630 miles high. Yes, SIX HUNDRED AND THIRTY MILES HIGH. Hundred dollar bills.

If you stacked them up like bricks, the mound of money would be a giant cube 70 feet long on each side. To transport it, you would need a fleet of semi-trucks more than a mile long. And these are HUNDRED DOLLAR BILLS!

This picture ($87 Billion) represents the sheer scale of $1 trillion in 100 dollar bills. Note the little speck in the bottom right corner – that’s a man and his car.

I reckon I could grab a six-inch stack of bills with each hand, if it was in front of me. That’s $300,000 – enough to buy a nice house in most of America.

Now imagine if we used the Fed’s $1 trillion printing press injection to build $300,000 houses on modest half-acre parcels. It would take up a swath of land the size of Delaware. Or you could choose to build nearly 1200 brand-spanking new Trump Towers like the one recently completed in Chicago – each 92 stories tall (quarter mile high), accommodating 10,000 people each.

Remember those old Miami Vice episodes from the 80’s when drug dealers would open up their briefcases, and it would be stuffed with hundred dollar bills? I always used to imagine what I could do with a whole briefcase full of money. The average worker’s lifelong earnings would not fill up one of those briefcases.

Out of curiosity, I whipped out my calculator to see how much an entire briefcase full of 100 dollar bills would be worth. Turns out it’s $840,000. See my math. Imagine what you could do with a single briefcase full of 100 dollar bills. You could buy yourself a really nice house. Travel the world first class for a couple of years. Properly managed, you could probably retire for life and live modestly.

Now imagine a stack of briefcases 56 miles high, all filled with 100 dollar bills. That’s the size of the $1 trillion that the Federal Reserve just authorized to be ‘released into the economy,’ e.g. printed/created/contrived. I’m not even going to touch on the assorted bank bailouts, stimulus packages and Obama’s obscene $3.6 trillion proposed FY2010 budget, because that would push the stack of money-filled briefcases so high into the atmosphere, they’d be a hazard to satellites.

The government is spending money it doesn’t have, and at this point, will NEVER have. It’s easy to imagine that this very year future historians are being born who, in 50 years or so, will be writing scathing historical criticisms of our generation’s government, attitudes, wastefulness and neglect. Yes, neglect. We are neglecting the future, as if it might not ever happen.

The Math, for those who care…
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Our present currency measures 2.61 inches wide by 6.14 inches long, and the thickness is 0.0043 inches. An ordinary briefcase is about 12.5 inches wide, 16.5 inches long and 3 inches thick. A 3-inch high stack of 100 dollar bills would consist of 700 bills worth $70,000. The briefcase could hold 12 such stacks, or $840,000. Dat’s a lotta money.

No? Well, you are not alone. The bombing of the USS Cole was a part of “The Clinton Legacy.”

The Clinton Legacy included the killings of dozens of American children by their government at Waco, the 2002 World Trade Center Attack, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Khobar Towers Bombing, the Embassy Bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and Al Qaeda Attacks on the American warship USS Cole.

February 26th 1993 – Terrorism first came to America with the first bombing of the World Trade Center. President Clinton treated it as a “criminal act” instead of an act of war.

17 April 1995 – The Oklahoma City bombing seemed to have had a middle-eastern terrorist connection, which the government did not pursue. Instead, they arrested, prosecuted and promptly executed Timothy McVeigh.

The next year saw the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia where 19 innocent Americans were murdered.

In 1998, U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by terrorists.

In October 2000, Al Qaeda struck America again, attacking an American warship, the USS Cole, while docked in Yemen. Fifteen American sailors were killed in a Yemen port and the ship seriously damaged. The Clinton government did not consider it an act of war and did nothing in response. Two months later, in December of 2000, the Central Intelligence Agency was within 24 hours of apprehending Bin Laden. Clinton pulled them off the trail when the American Ambassador to Yemen complained that the investigation was causing trouble for US/Yemen relations. The CIA was pulled out of Yemen, and Osama Bin Laden got away.

2005 to date, by Kerfuffles.
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